1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to bread products having enhanced nutritional values and reduced caloric content.
2. Description of the Prior Art
For many years there have been available to American consumers a number of products called diet breads. In general, they are light colored, bland flavored loaves similar to white bread in taste and in composition. Dark colored loaves usually have been obtained by the inclusion of caramel color and not by using roughage-rich whole grain flours. The nutritional contribution of these commercial diet breads has been the inclusion of vegetable flours such as soy flour, dried edible yeasts, casein, gum gluten and dry skim milk into a white bread formula. Any caloric reduction per unit weight generally results only from a reduction or elimination of fat from such a formula.
Recently, there has arisen the realization that roughage from plant sources, measured as crude fiber, is not just a non-assimilable component but is a dietary component possessing great nutritional significance. See Spiller, "Role of Dietary Fiber in Nutrition," Food Product Development, September, 1974. Studies comparing the typical purified Western diet with certain African groups and their effects provide unequivocal statistics indicating that habitually increased intakes of such roughage or crude fiber causes reduction in the incidence of tumors of the colon and rectum, appendicitis, haital hernia, hemorrhoids, constipation and related gastrointestinal problems. There is also some evidence that people on a fiber rich diet are spared some circulatory diseases including atherosclerosis.
Upon analysis, commercial diet breads show a protein content close to whole wheat bread. It has been recognized that the component of the population consuming proportinately the greatest amount of bread -- the young and the poor -- are most apt to receive insufficient protein in both quantity and quality.
USDA Handbook No. 8, "Composition of Foods," 1963, provides the following maximum analyses of standard white and whole wheat breads:
______________________________________ Crude Calorie/ Water Carbohydrate Protein Fat Fiber 100 gm ______________________________________ White Bread 35 50.2 9.0 3.8 .2 275 Whole Wheat Bread 36.4 47.7 10.5 3.0 1.6 243 ______________________________________
Analysis has revealed that diet loaves on the market are similar to whole wheat bread in protein content, and approximate white bread in crude fiber content. A typical "diet" loaf has a caloric value of about 257 calories/100 grams; this is only slightly lower than white bread. The low fat content of these diet breads is primarily responsible for these minor differences.
Various low calorie bread products have been proposed in the patent literature. Singer, U.S. Pat. No. 3,574,634 describes a product in which low caloric content is achieved in part by the elimination or reduction of starch. Glicksman, U.S. Pat. No. 3,676,150, discloses a low calorie baked product based on a gluten-free formula. Tsantir, U.S. Pat. No. 3,767,423, describes a low calorie bread product containing a mixture of rice hulls and soy bean hulls. None of these proposed low calorie breads, however, has succeeded in providing a commercially feasible and consumer-acceptable product.
In view of the shortcomings of the so-called diet breads now on the market, it would be highly desirable to provide a bread product which is truly a "diet bread" in that it possesses a significant reduction in caloric content while maintaining the appearance and texture of standard bread types including white and dark loaves.